Chinese European Art Center Exhibition Made in Québec by Kim Waldron (Canada)

The project Made in Québecinvolves exporting myself to China to work for workers, framing myself as a Canadian commodity at work in a Chinese context. This gesture can be understood as a giving back of some of the time that Chinese products have saved Westerners. Through my placement in different work environments, these photographs focus on the context I find myself in. Although the images present an imagined relationship between these environments and myself, the reflection is on our real relationship to the commodities we produce and consume.

My previous photographic work has involved placing myself in specific real-life contexts and documenting the interaction that takes place. These projects have involved traveling to France, Austria and Newfoundland where the social dynamics of each location have informed the images that I have produced. My art practice, focused almost exclusively on self-portraiture, underlines the importance of context and understanding one’s relationship to that context. By placing myself in various situations in the world and documenting my reactions to those situations, I am defining the different personas we construct socially. From this perspective, the choice of location for creating each project is a central component of the content of the artwork. Considering that China is the largest exporter of goods in the world[1] and that it is emerging as a superpower built on the labor of its workforce, my project engages directly with the power dynamics at play in a global context. The photographs provide a human dimension to our abstract relationship to production and consumption.